


Lead Me Home

by jemariel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Coda, First Kiss, Fix-It, Fluff, Frottage, Grieving Dean Winchester, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, Prayer, Reunions, Smuff, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27425677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemariel/pseuds/jemariel
Summary: They’re back. They’re all back. Everyone Chuck took—Donna, Eileen, Stevie, Bobby, the other hunters.All of them.Except one.Even when it should be impossible, Castiel will always come when Dean calls.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 88
Kudos: 1658





	Lead Me Home

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [Lead Me Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27435553) by [PigeonBlood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PigeonBlood/pseuds/PigeonBlood)



> So we're all busy dying after last night's episode, so I had to process this through fanfiction. As I do. I'm sure everyone and their mother has written this fic already but HEY MORE CAKES RIGHT??
> 
> Thanks to [Elanor-n-evermind](https://elanor-n-evermind.tumblr.com) for the quick beta-read.

They’re back. They’re all back. Everyone Chuck took—Donna, Eileen, Stevie, Bobby, the other hunters.

All of them.

Except one.

“You okay, Dean?”

Charlie’s hand is small and light on his shoulder, the one still stained with blood, and Dean flinches away. “Yeah,” he says, robotic. “Just—go ahead, I’m gonna—” he jerks a thumb over his shoulder. He’s probably got a bottle of Jack in his room somewhere. Good idea? No. But he’s earned it.

He’s fucking earned it today.

Charlie nods and wanders away, leaving Dean with the hollowness of his body, the ache that makes it hard to move, or even breathe.

He can’t look at them. All around him, throughout the whole bunker, people are excitedly greeting loved ones and friends. Sam and Eileen have disappeared, and that’s probably for the best, but it leaves Dean alone in a deluge of other peoples’ happiness. The relief in the air, the joy, is like salted sandpaper on Dean’s raw nerves. He feels like one walking open wound.

Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Cas’s face. Sees the tears in those enormous blue eyes, hears the impossible words falling from his lips.

He can’t.

The weight of the whiskey bottle in his hand feels like the oldest friend he has right now. An hour later, the bottle is considerably lighter, and Dean’s wanderings further and further from the noise upstairs have led him down, down into the belly of the bunker.

Down to the trap room. His feet stop cold when he realizes where he’s led himself, icy adrenaline washing over him as he stares at the place where Cas was taken from him.

Taken at the worst possible fucking moment.

They could have had so much time, and instead, there wasn’t enough. Not even enough for him to get out a few fucking words.

Just a few godforsaken words, that was all he’d needed to say, and he’d fucked that up too.

Swaying on his feet, he clings to the bottle, to the shelf, to anything that might keep his knees from buckling. There are already tears on his face—of course there are—but his body heaves in a wretched sob, and from there he can’t stop. He loses the battle against gravity; the shock of concrete under his knees adds a grounding, visceral counterpoint to his heartache.

“Cas,” he murmurs through the tears, and it’s not until then that he realizes what he’s doing. “Cas, I—shit.” Another swig, and he sets the bottle aside. If he’s gonna do this—he _has_ to do this—then he’s gonna do it right.

As right as he can, now.

The fluorescent lights overhead blur before his eyes, and he’s not sure if it’s the whiskey or the tears. Both, probably. He shuts them out and focuses on Cas. “Cas, I want you to hear me. I don’t know if you can, but—this is. This is all I got left, so it’ll have to do.”

And then, just like before, his mind fucking blanks out. He has no idea what to say, how to put into words everything, _everything_ he feels for his angel.

“God, Cas, I’m sorry. I can’t—I don’t know how to do this. I wish you were here—god, I wish we’d had just—” He stops. Swallows. If they’d had just a few more minutes. “I’d show you how I feel. I’m no good with the words, but I—you have to know I love you, too.” They come out on a hiccoughing, choking breath, and he has to swallow barbed wire for a few moments. A wash of white-hot rage bubbles through him out of nowhere, and his knuckles clang against the shelf. He hates that it feels good to hit something. “Dammit, Cas, why now? Why like this? You selfish bastard, why—?” Then he slumps against the shelf, fight draining from him as quickly as it had come on. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t be better for you. You’re the most—everything you said about me, if any of that’s true, it’s true because of you. Alright? Without you, I’m—” _a machine. A broken, useless machine._ Dean knuckles his fists into his eyes. Exhaustion creeps up the back of his neck, and it feels so good to close his eyes. “So I don’t know if you’re even hearing this, but. Please, come back. If you can come back. Please. I’m gonna try. I’m gonna try, every night. Done it before, right? Prayed for you? And I’m gonna—We’ve beat this kinda thing so many times, we can do it again. I promise. I promise, Cas, we’ll get you back. I’ll get you back. I promise...”

He doesn’t remember falling asleep. Or maybe it’s more like passing out on the cold concrete floor. He remembers a pair of strong hands pulling him up, walking him through the halls. Sam, probably. His eyes feel glued shut, and he doesn’t really feel like opening them anyway, so he just lets himself be guided. Those hands could be walking him off a cliff right now and he would hardly notice. Or care.

Instead, he feels himself being lowered down onto his bed. His inhumanly soft bed. Every part of him hurts, and the softness is almost worse than the floor. He curls in on himself, on the emptiness in his belly, and tries to find sleep again.

His dreams are restless, and in them he hears the sound of feathered wings in flight, feels their sharp caress on his cheek. The only light he sees is a glowing blue-white. 

His brain and body want him to be awake long before he gives in. His face feels sweaty and his head hurts, a more mundane kind of hurt from too much whiskey on too little food and water.

When he finally pries his eyes open, he’s instantly convinced he’s still dreaming.

Because there’s no fucking way Cas is sitting at his desk, staring at his hands like he intends to wait out the next apocalypse there.

He closes his eyes again, lets the world pitch and roll around him. Waits for the hallucination to pass.

Opens his eyes.

Cas is still there.

The second Dean stirs, Cas’s statue-stillness breaks, and there are those eyes, his weathered face and scruffy cheeks, the trenchcoat and the tie. He looks solid and warm, rumpled and real, and Dean has to be dreaming.

“Hello, Dean,” he says.

Dean’s breath freezes in his lungs. “Are you—”

“The Empty was left very unstable after Jack’s explosion,” he says. “A few things were able to slip through the cracks. I shouldn’t have been able to hear your prayer, but… I did.” Oh, fuck, that smile is back on his face, that soft little stretch of lips that makes his eyes glow like that. “I heard you, Dean, and I was able to follow you home.”

Dean doesn’t remember moving, but all at once he’s out of his bed, bruised knees protesting but not enough to stop him. The next thing he knows, Cas is under his hands. He hauls the angel to his feet by the lapels and wraps him up in his arms, burying his face in his shoulder like he hasn’t done to anyone since he was a kid, and squeezing as tight as he can.

“What the hell, Cas?” he murmurs when he finds his voice. It shakes, but he finds it anyway.

“Did you mean it?” Cas pulls back just far enough to look Dean in the eye. “Dean. Did you—”

And for once, Dean does not freeze, but he also doesn’t need to rely on words. He just leans forward. Cas’s question cuts off with a startled _“mmf—”_ and then Dean has to process the cool, damp press of Cas’s lips on his own. 

Cas’s lips. Cas’s breath on his cheek as it leaves him in a rush. The gentle nudge of Cas’s nose, chilly like he’s been out in the rain.

Fuck, _Cas—_

A few seconds, a few slow movements, and Dean has to break the kiss to breathe. He feels dizzy, but Cas is there for him to lean on. Eyes closed, brows knocked together, Dean focuses on getting air where he needs it and keeping Cas as close as he can.

“Shoulda done that a long time ago,” he says.

“How long—?” 

Dean’s hands start moving and don’t seem to want to stop, finding the shape of Cas’s body through the heavy coat. It’s easier to talk with his eyes shut, feeling Cas’s closeness. “I don’t even know, man. I was pretty confused about a lot of things for a long time, and I tried to deny it for a lot of stupid reasons. But—I mean, who’s got time for that, right? We’re here, and I—” His throat tries to close up on him, and he has to pull back. With Cas staring at him like he’s something worth seeing, the words break free of their prison. “I love you. So much I can’t take it.”

The glow on Cas’s face is worth it. Dean will say it a thousand times an hour if it keeps Cas looking like that.

Somehow, through a lot of mutual shuffling, they end up on the bed. Dean’s hands wind their way under the trenchcoat into the warmth of Cas’s body; Cas peels off the coat and then the suit jacket under it. “Leave the tie, though,” Dean says, just to watch Cas’s head tilt like that and feel his own heart explode. There’s an awkward moment when Dean realizes he fell asleep with his boots on, and they have to disentangle so that he can untie them and kick them off. Cas’s hands don’t leave him the entire time. In fact, one of them lands on his shoulder, over that ghost of a bloody handprint on his jacket. Something twists in Dean’s heart at the feel of it, and he has to shrug out of his layers so that he can get Cas’s hand on his shoulder properly, where it belongs.

“Dean,” Cas starts, but Dean doesn’t want to hear it. He shuts him up with a kiss that goes deeper than before, open mouths and shared breath, now with Cas’s skin so much closer. Heat zooms through him, from his neck to his toes and back, leaving his body restless and uselessly wanting.

Then Cas shifts. _Just right._

And they both gasp together. “Oh, sweetheart,” Dean sighs against his lips as he grabs Cas around the waist and finds that perfect angle again. There’s still too much clothing between them; he feels like a teenager, giddy and drunk on kisses, everything feeling too raw and _right now_ to do anything more than push against each other wherever feels good. Cas’s cheeks are flushed bright pink, his face a startled O, his breathing picking up with every roll of Dean’s hips. “Is this—?” he starts to ask.

“Yes,” Cas answers, gripping him tight in return. “Yes, Dean—”

For a long while, they kiss again, until Dean can’t concentrate and he has to pull back to pant into Cas’s neck. The friction of his jeans and underwear is starting to chafe, everything hot and humid, fervent. “Are we really gonna—?” he starts.

“I can stop—” 

“Nope.” Dean tightens his legs around Cas’s hips.

“Dean. Let me.” 

Dean collapses back on the bed and watches as Cas’s hands make their way too slowly toward the fly of his jeans. There’s a _reverence_ on his face that Dean can hardly fathom. “Remember that one time I promised you you wouldn’t die a virgin?” Dean asks, the words popping out of his mouth like a deranged jack-in-the-box.

Cas’s hands pause, and he raises an eyebrow at Dean. “I do remember that.”

“Shoulda just done the deed myself instead of taking you to that—that—” Dean’s thought process short-circuits when Cas’s hand lands over the bulge in his jeans. “Shit.”

“Den of iniquity?”

“Yeah, that.”

Then Cas’s hands are working on his zipper and there’s no more room for words.

Turns out, skin on skin is way better than jeans, and even if it’s just Cas’s hand around them both while Dean clings to him with every part of his body, the bliss that washes over and through them is the kind that settles into Dean’s bones, tingles up his bloodstream and comes out his mouth in a long, high-pitched giggle.

“What’s so funny?” Cas asks, lazy and lethargic, still draped over Dean’s chest.

“Nothin’. Just. Oh, man.” Dean presses a kiss into the hair above Cas’s ear, breathing in the scent of him, mountain air and sea salt. “I never wanna lose you again,” he mutters, laughter turning abruptly on its head and threatening tears. Jesus, don’t like the emotion, wait five seconds, he thinks, it’ll change.

Cas leans up to press a tender kiss to his brow. “You won’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> Good luck between now and next week y'all. Follow me on [tumblr](https://jemariel.tumblr.com/post/634084339927367680/lead-me-home) if you like! (There's a post there if you'd like to reblog this.)
> 
> Also if you're looking for other destiel nerds to scream with, you can join the [Profound Bond Discord Server!](https://discord.gg/profoundbond) We're nice, and only bite consensually :D


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